


On the Subject of Magnetic Bodies

by magikarpeggio



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Will (TV 2017)
Genre: Feelings, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical References, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 16:51:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikarpeggio/pseuds/magikarpeggio
Summary: Um, basically, Marlowe has lots of feelings about Shakespeare and turns to the language of early modern magnetism to try to quantify those feelings. As you do.(... magnets, how do they work? This will not help you answer that question.)





	On the Subject of Magnetic Bodies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indigostohelit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/gifts).



  _Yet the Philosopher Averroes writeth, That the Magnes draweth not Yron unto it, but the Yron of his natural Inclination moveth to the Stone. .... for it is apparent, that the Yron hath no Attractive Virtue nor Power of it self, until it have received it of the Stone._

\- Robert Norman, _The Newe Attractive_ (1581)

The word Kit wants is affinity. Kit remembers his natural philosophy experiments from Cambridge; he remembers reading about the lodestone and the iron, the endless dialogue over whether the powers of attraction lie in the iron or in the stone itself.

He loved it all: realizing that the world held no secrets that couldn’t be uncovered, not if you were shrewd and daring enough. That there was nothing sacred; no end to the questions he could ask and the answers he could ferret out.

What he remembers best, though, is seeing the iron fillings fly towards the attractive point of the lodestone, as if by instinct. As if by affinity.

That’s where his mind takes him when he sees Will’s guileless blue eyes; what he feels spark when his fingertips brush against Will’s sleeve, as if by chance; what he knows must be at work when he hears the lines Will’s written (however impoverished the recitation might be) and thinks, whatever is required to keep him safe, he'll do it.

When he clasps Will’s hand later that night, he feels that same pull, that quick, unbidden sense of bone-deep recognition – and he’s furious. Understanding attraction is one thing; experiencing it is another. There is no reason for it and no sense to it; it is terra incognita, and Kit has no compass. He as helpless as the flecks of iron he remembers flying towards the lodestone, only to be reconstituted and transformed in that single instant.

The solution, as Kit sees it, is to accompany Will back to his inn, push him up against the door of his room, and kiss him until his legs buckle. As they stumble over to the straw mattress in the corner of the bedroom, clutching each other fiercely and gasping for air, Kit thinks, with some satisfaction, that it isn’t clear who’s moving whom. 

+++

_… the causes of magnetick coition must be set forth. We say coition, not attraction. The word attraction unfortunately crept into magnetick philosophy from the ignorance of the ancients; for there seems to be force applied where there is attraction and an imperious violence dominates. For, if ever there is talk about magnetick attraction, we understand thereby magnetick coition … if the Loadstone attract, the Steel hath also its attraction; for in this action the Alliency is reciprocall, which jointly felt, they mutually approach and run into each others arms._  
-William Gilbert, _De Magnete_ (1600)

Maybe affinity isn’t the right word after all. It doesn’t capture the sickening lurch Kit’s stomach gives when he watches Will in a dead-sleep at night, nor the way his pulse quickens at even the slightest touch of Will’s bare skin on his. How to describe it? Affinity means relationship, means dependence – it’s blood relationships, it’s spiritual kinship; it is, above all, connection. It might even mean likeness. But beyond the surface, Kit can’t trace much of a resemblance; Will, who knows so much less of the world, can write like he’s seen it all - and in modes that Marlowe struggles to master. They might both write about the possibility of redemption, but Kit suspects that only one of them really believes in it. They both are bound, inextricably, to very different people and places: Will has his wife, and Kit has the Crown. And yet, all the same, Kit feels a sense of recognition and of homecoming.

What affinity misses is the physicality of their connection – how embodied it feels to Kit. It’s an urge that’s as instinctual or as necessary as eating. He tries to describe it to Will one morning, as his hands lazily crest the curves of Will’s body, reciting softly, “Even as delicious meat is to the taste, so was his neck in touching,” and Will shudders and smiles and calls him a fiend. Marlowe stops himself from composing a blazon to the rest of Will’s body on the spot – he would, in particular, like to focus on Will’s eyes, chest, and the heavenly path that runs along his back - but he makes a mental note to return to the subject later when he’s less distracted.

Affinity doesn’t work; neither does attraction. They’re good words but not the ones he wants for this particular feeling. Every atom of his being has been reshaped and renamed; he is, every moment, becoming something other than himself, answering someone else’s call. It’s not that the ideas Kit wants aren’t there, circulating in the ether – they are – but the right words?

He won’t get those.

+++

  
_You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;_  
_But yet you draw not iron, for my heart_  
_Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,_  
_And I shall have no power to follow you._  
-Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (1595)

There is a warrant out for Kit’s arrest, and he goes to Deptford. He leaves Will behind in Southwark, promising to take care, and to return quickly. Will’s working on something – a sonnet sequence – and he works best with Kit at hand. But instead, Kit’s killed in a drunken brawl – or assassinated, depending on who’s telling the story.

Later, Will writes about characters who cannot stop themselves from falling in love, even if it might mean their own ruin – it’s a force of nature, a sly trick of the gods. The supernatural intervenes in human affairs and chaos reigns, if only for a few hours on stage. But, because he’s kinder to his fellows than fate has been to him, amends are made, justice is restored, and all turns out well enough in the end. There's absence and betrayal and loss, but there's also the possibility of healing.

Kit's lost to him and even while that can't be recuperated, it helps a little to see a comic ending rather than an endless succession of tragic ones. Will loves writing of finding of what's been lost; the broken circle that comes back together; the patchwork story, told by a chorus of voices, that fills that wide gap of time. There is, in that unity, a kind of concord without which the universe would go to pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I looked at quite a few early modern sources (primary and secondary) for help; you can look at Robert Norman's "The Newe Attractive" and William Gilbert's "De Magnete" (the last line is pretty shamelessly stolen from there) for early modern writings on magnetism, and if you want to read other people talking about those things, you can consult Ronda Arab's (et al) "Historical Affects and the Early Modern Theater" and Aaron Kitch's "The Secret History of Magnets: Finding the Human(ities) in the History of Science." Matthew Greenfield's article "Marlowe's Wound Knowledge" is also really fun. 
> 
> Yuletide Recipient: Thank you a hundred thousand times for giving me the great gift of "Will," a TV show I did not know I wanted until I read about it in your letter. (This was as good as the time I discovered Queen Elizabeth I detective fiction.) Apologies for not including witty banter; I can't even write it in modern English, and I was worried it'd sound like it was written by AI who had been fed Shakespeare.


End file.
